The Martyr’s Curse (Ben Hope, Book 11)

by Scott Mariani

  They bundled the terrified driver out and forced him down on his knees on the road, together with his co-driver. The masked man with the gun stood threateningly over them. Moments later, the second attacker disappeared inside the van, reappearing after a few seconds and then striding briskly to the back doors and hauling them open.

  From that point, due to the relative angle of the vehicles, it was unclear exactly what had happened. All that the witness statements could verify was that the single prisoner the van had been transporting had been quickly, efficiently transferred into the black Mercedes. Turnbull only caught a glimpse of the man, late thirties, jeans, T-shirt, cropped hair, being manhandled towards the car. The Mercedes then took off at high speed, wheels spinning and leaving trails of rubber on the road. Within seconds it was gone, leaving behind it an empty prison van, two very stunned guards and a whole crowd of shocked onlookers.

  None of the witnesses had ever seen a hijack before. And it was unlikely that any of them would do so again in their lifetimes. Especially one so brazenly, swiftly and professionally carried out in broad daylight. Long after Turnbull and the others had finished giving their statements and been released to go their separate ways, the police still had no clue as to who could have snatched the violent offender Miki Donath so soon after his departure from Bezirksgefängnis Altdorf.

  The search for the missing prisoner was soon underway. It wouldn’t take long to find him.

  Chapter Fifty-Six

  Silvie peeled off her mask and shook her hair free. ‘I can’t believe we did it.’

  Ben had already removed his and tossed it into the back seat of the stolen Mercedes, where the claw hammer and the toy Airsoft Colt .45 replica lay. When all you had was a plastic gun, you needed to make a bit of a show by smashing things up with a good strong hammer. The intimidation factor was surprisingly effective. ‘You don’t spend years taking down kidnappers without learning a few tricks from them,’ he said, driving fast.

  ‘Now we’re in deep shit,’ she said.

  Ben shook his head. ‘No, Miki Donath’s the one in deep shit. Besides, right now we could abduct the UN Secretary General and nobody would even slap our wrists.’

  ‘I don’t think the Swiss authorities will see it that way.’

  ‘Not my business,’ Ben said. A set of junctions flashed up. He piled through them, left, right, left again, tyres screeching. Horns wailed in protest. He didn’t blink or glance back. ‘My business is what we’re carrying in the boot of this car.’

  ‘What are we going to do with him?’ she asked.

  ‘Threaten him that he’ll get nothing from Santa this year if he doesn’t tell us where Streicher’s hiding out.’

  ‘You really think he knows?’

  ‘He knows more about it than we do,’ Ben said. ‘I’m sure of it. I saw it in his eyes.’

  ‘How could you see that in his eyes?’

  ‘Mirrors of the soul,’ Ben said. ‘You should pay more attention to those things.’

  ‘Donath’s a psychotic child rapist and arms dealer. He doesn’t have a soul.’

  ‘Then they’re the mirrors of whatever other evil shit he’s got stashed away in there. I guarantee that whatever we get from him will advance our knowledge. And that’s good enough for me.’

  ‘Meanwhile, we’re driving a stolen car.’

  ‘A stolen car with plates borrowed from a T-boned wreck of a BMW in a scrapyard in Altdorf,’ he reminded her. ‘Not one that’s going to come up on the radar any time soon.’

  ‘These methods don’t bother you?’

  ‘You mean stealing cars? I don’t generally make a habit of it.’

  ‘I noticed.’

  ‘Anyway, that’s what insurance is for. And whoever owns this thing can afford taxis.’

  ‘We should leave the owner a note,’ she said.

  ‘Saying “thank you for doing your part for national security”?’ he said. ‘We’ll ditch it as soon as we get to Emmen Air Base and pick up the Hummer. After that, we need to keep our eyes peeled for lonely farm buildings, derelict factories or disused warehouses.’

  ‘You have this all worked out,’ she said. ‘But have you given any serious thought to how you’re going to extract information from a former KSK special forces hard case?’

  ‘Don’t need to,’ Ben said. ‘I’m a former special forces hard case myself. And my unit could have wiped the floor with those KSK boys, any day of the week, with our arms tied behind our backs and bags over our heads.’

  Silvie looked doubtful.

  ‘He’ll talk,’ Ben said.

  Silvie said nothing.

  Altdorf to Lucerne was a forty-kilometre drive, mostly by motorway. From Lucerne, the town of Emmen was only a short distance, and Militärflugplatz Emmen lay close by. They reached it just before two o’clock that afternoon. It was almost exclusively a military airbase, with limited commercial or civilian use, not the kind of place the public could just show up unannounced and expect to be let into. But Interpol’s magic ticket worked once again, the gates buzzed open without questions being asked, and they found the H1 Hummer waiting for them inside a green prefab building, the key in the ignition, freshly rolled off a French military Airbus transport plane that had come in late that morning.

  Luc Simon had come through for them, even better than his word. Two heavy-duty NATO-issue kitbags sitting side-by-side in the back contained more stuff than Ben had requested. Inside one was a Ziploc plastic pouch full of walking-around money, a thick bundle of mixed euros and Swiss francs. New phones and radios. An SOG tactical knife with a rubber handle and razor-sharp blackened blade, and a pair of strong aluminium police handcuffs, perhaps included just as a reminder to Ben to bring Streicher in alive. The second bag was heavier, containing a shiny, oiled pair of latest-generation FAMAS rifles and enough fresh ammunition to furnish a platoon, along with Ben’s requested Browning pistol, minus GPS tracker. Five spare magazines, thirteen rounds apiece, all fully loaded with shiny new nine-millimetre full-metal jackets. Perhaps Luc Simon didn’t care about Streicher being brought in alive after all.

  Ben cocked and locked the handgun and shoved it into its usual nestling place behind his right hip, where he was convinced he had a natural hollow from all the years of carrying one. Then all he had to do was sign a release form and Omar’s gunmetal-grey monster and all its contents were his. He jumped up behind the controls and fired it up. The powerful engine burst into life with a roar at the first twist of the key. The fuel tank was full to the brim. Ben drove it out of the airbase with Silvie following in the Mercedes.

  A kilometre up the road, by the side of the base’s wire-mesh fence, they stopped again. Ben jumped down from the Hummer and they opened the boot of the stolen car. Any illusions Miki Donath might have been entertaining that the dramatic hijacking of his prison van was a rescue mission were, by now, completely dispelled. ‘You’re a dead man,’ he growled as Ben cuffed his hands behind his back and then dragged him out of the Mercedes to frogmarch him to the Hummer. ‘You should just blow your own brains out right now. You’re fucked for this. You hear me?’

  ‘And you’re not in your little pink cell any more,’ Ben said. Before Donath could reply, he whacked him sharply over the back of the head with the Browning. Donath went as limp as a wet towel and collapsed face down in the back of the Hummer. Ben used the same roll of duct tape left over from before to bind up his ankles and his torso, round and round until he looked like a giant cocooned insect. He slapped another four-inch length over his mouth. Then they emptied out the Mercedes, wiped down the interior surfaces, shut it up and abandoned it.

  Silvie clambered into the passenger seat of the Hummer. ‘Where it all began,’ she said with a lopsided grin.

  ‘I still have plenty of tape left,’ he said. ‘So don’t you give me any trouble.’

  ‘Careful. I might have to arrest you again.’

  ‘Now for the hard part,’ Ben said as they took off.

  ‘He won’t talk,’ s
he said, shaking her head and looking serious.

  ‘Hard for him,’ Ben said. ‘Not for us.’

  ‘He won’t talk,’ Silvie said again.

  Chapter Fifty-Seven

  For anyone driving an enormous military-style four-wheel-drive laden with automatic weapons, a stack of ammunition and a hijacked prisoner, it made sense to steer largely clear of the prying eyes of civilisation and its polite citizens. Something that should have been easy in the central Swiss canton of Uri. It stretched for over a thousand mountainous square kilometres, of which almost a fifth was covered in thick pine forest and less than two per cent was inhabited. They passed through verdant valleys and skirted glittering blue lakes over which lazy paddle steamers scudded in the distance. The road rose and fell dramatically; now offering spectacular lofty views of the jagged mountain peaks, now dropping steeply to be swallowed by green tunnels of foliage. The sunny afternoon was wearing on. Three o’clock came and went and Ben was getting impatient. He considered stopping half a dozen times, but could see nowhere ideal. What he had in mind couldn’t be done at the side of the road.

  ‘Hell,’ he muttered as they unexpectedly hit a town. It was a small, rural place comprised mostly of neat, decorative little gingerbread houses, with a church whose ornate spire poked up through the trees, and a flagpole in the square proudly flying the bull’s head on a yellow background, the symbol of the canton. Next to the pole was a neat wooden sign with arrows pointing in three different directions towards narrow roads that led off the square. One said Rathaus, town hall; one said Bahnhof, railway station; another said Ärztezentrum, health centre. Ben pressed on.

  It was Silvie who spotted the abandoned cottage in deep countryside a few kilometres further on, half hidden among the leafy undergrowth to their right, several hundred metres from the twisting road.

  ‘Back up,’ she said, pointing. Ben hit the brakes and reversed until he could see it, too. He nodded and twisted the wheel and bumped the Hummer off the road and on to the rutted earth track that led to the old house. As they approached they could see the decaying wooden shutters hanging off the windows, the sagging roofline and the weeds growing up around the front door. The corroded shell of a dead Simca was the only motor vehicle in sight. Nobody had lived here for a long time.

  At the end of the track, Ben killed the engine and kicked open his door, walked round to the back of the Hummer and opened it up to reach inside and grab the prone Donath by the tape that bound him. The German was awake and struggling, muttering incomprehensibly behind the gag over his mouth. His eyes were bulging and his face was livid, a road map of veins swollen up all over his temples and forehead as he strained pointlessly to free himself. Ben used the SOG knife to slash through the tape binding his legs and dragged him out. Donath was unsteady on his feet as Ben steered him roughly in the direction of the derelict cottage.

  ‘What are we going to do with him?’ Silvie said again, biting her lip and looking at Ben with uncertain eyes.

  ‘William Tell was supposed to have lived in these parts,’ Ben said. ‘If we had a crossbow, we could honour the legend by standing matey boy up against a tree and taking turns shooting apples off his head. That might loosen him up a bit.’

  Silvie didn’t look amused. ‘We don’t have a crossbow, Ben.’

  ‘Shame.’

  He kicked the cottage’s front door. It burst in, flakes of old paint and slivers of rotting wood falling to the floor. The hallway smelled of damp and mice. Plaster was peeling off the walls and the bare wooden boards felt soft and loose underfoot. A doorway at the end of the hall, rodent-gnawed and ragged along its bottom edge, opened up into a gloomy room that had been stripped of its furniture, apart from a pair of ancient wooden chairs. Broken light peeped in through the cracks in the closed shutters.

  Ben shoved Donath towards one of the chairs and pressed his shoulders down hard to force him to sit, with his cuffed hands looped behind the backrest. He tossed Silvie the tape, and held the Browning at Donath’s head while she fastened the man’s ankles to the chair legs and wrapped two lengths around his torso.

  Ben pulled the other chair up and sat opposite Donath, two metres away with the gun in his right hand aimed squarely at the man’s chest. He reached out with his left hand and ripped the four-inch length of tape from Donath’s mouth. ‘Now let’s get started,’ he said.

  Donath gave him the shark eyes. ‘You’re a condemned man.’

  ‘We’ve already covered that part,’ Ben said. ‘What comes next is, you tell us exactly where your friend Udo Streicher’s gone to ground, and we don’t leave you here for the maggots. How does that sound?’

  ‘You want to find Streicher,’ Donath said.

  ‘You’re a really fast learner,’ Ben said. ‘No wonder your pal thought you were good Parati material.’

  Donath smiled. ‘You’ve gone to all this trouble, it means you have no idea at all where he is, do you?’

  ‘We’ll find him, one way or another,’ Silvie said.

  Donath’s gaze swivelled sideways to peer at her. He smiled more broadly, with the same smug expression he’d shown during the prison interview. Go, Udo. ‘No chance. He’s smarter than all of you fuckers put together.’

  Ben raised the Browning a few degrees higher, so that it pointed at Donath’s forehead. ‘Talk,’ he said. ‘Now.’

  The German appeared unmoved. The smile stayed on his lips, as if nothing could give him more pleasure than sitting here taunting these two idiots, knowing they were in a jam and that he held all the cards. ‘Go ahead and shoot me, Arschloch. Not going to change a thing. Udo’s got a little surprise for everyone.’

  ‘We know about his plans,’ Silvie said. ‘I can assure you, they won’t happen.’

  ‘Is that a fact? How’re you going to stop him? Or don’t you think he means business? Then you don’t know him.’

  ‘I asked you to help us. You want millions of people to die, is that it?’ Silvie said.

  Donath just shrugged. ‘What the fuck do I care what happens to them?’

  Nobody spoke. Silence in the gloomy cottage. The overpowering stink of rot crowded in on them. Ben looked at the pistol in his hand, and gave it a waggle. ‘This doesn’t really scare you, does it, Miki?’ he said.

  ‘I’ve had guns pointed at me before,’ Donath growled. ‘Plenty of times. By men a lot harder than you, and I’m still here.’

  ‘That’s the problem with these things,’ Ben said, lowering the pistol. He rested it on his knee. Clicked on the safety. ‘They’re all or nothing. There’s no middle ground with them. Even if I shoot you in the legs, you’ll be in shock and bleed out too quickly to be of any use to me.’

  ‘Bluffer,’ Donath said. ‘I knew it.’

  ‘I don’t need a gun to make you talk to me,’ Ben said. ‘And you will talk. Even if I have to hurt you. Do you understand that?’

  Donath’s satisfied little smile broadened out into a grin. ‘You think you can hurt me, prick?’

  ‘I get it,’ Ben said. ‘You’re a proper tough guy. The real deal. You’re not scared of a little roughing up, because you’ve been through all that and you were taught how to handle it, back in the day. RTI, we used to call it. Resistance to interrogation training.’

  Donath’s grin slackened off into a sour grimace. He spat. The shark eyes watched Ben.

  ‘I’ve been through it myself,’ Ben said. ‘Not much fun, but you get over it. It teaches you a lot of useful lessons, too. About yourself. About human frailty. Because no matter how tough we are, we’re all human and there’s a limit to what each and every one of us can take. Even you, Miki. Don’t kid yourself about that. Or about who I am. Not for one second. It would be a serious error of judgement.’

  ‘Why, who the fuck are you?’ Donath growled.

  ‘I’m the guy who knows where the limits are,’ Ben said. ‘Trust me, I’ll drive right through them and break you into a hundred pieces without thinking twice. I’ll feel absolutely no remorse afterwards. Just like y
ou, after what you and your friends did to the little girl.’

  Donath said nothing.

  Silvie stepped around the chair to face him. She rested a hand lightly on Ben’s shoulder and bent down so that her face was at the same level as the German’s. ‘Miki, listen to us, please. You don’t have to stand up for Streicher. He’s not your friend. He could have used this opportunity to get you out of jail, but he didn’t. If he releases this plague, you’re just another victim as far as he’s concerned.’

  Donath’s face worked for a few moments as he turned that thought over. He shook his head. ‘Go play your mind games somewhere else, bitch. Think I’m a retard or something?’

  ‘Last chance,’ Ben said. ‘Where is he?’

  Donath shook his head again and clamped his mouth shut, turned his head away and stared resolutely into the murky corner of the room. Silvie stood up, biting her lip, and looked at Ben, as if to say, I can’t talk to this guy.

  The clock was ticking. Every moment that passed, Udo Streicher could be getting ready to drop his bomb on hundreds, thousands, millions of innocent people.

  ‘Nobody just disappears,’ Ben said. ‘Not while they’re still alive. But you will. Take it from me. So answer me. Where’s Streicher hiding out?’

  Donath turned his gaze back on Ben. The shark eyes seemed to twinkle for a moment. ‘Somewhere you’ll never get to him, that’s for sure. He’ll know you’re coming. One whiff of your stink from a mile away and he’ll lock down and stay buried for as long as it takes. He can stay down there a year if he has to.’

  ‘I’m not going anywhere,’ Ben said. ‘I’ll be there waiting for him when he sticks his head out of whatever foxhole he’s cowering in. And you’re going to tell me where to be standing.’